Read The Spoilers / Juggernaut for Free Online Page B

neighbourhood. It was enough to make a man laugh—or cry.
    Warren made no moral judgments. To him it was a social and medical problem. He was not immediately concerned with the fundamental instability in a man which led him to take heroin; all he knew was that when the man was hooked he was hooked for good. At that stage there was no point in recrimination because it solved nothing. There was a sick man to be helped, and Warren helped him, fighting society at large, the police and even the addict himself.
    It was in this pub, and in places like it, that he had heard the three hard facts and the thousand rumours which constituted the core of the special knowledge which Hellier was trying to get from him. To mix with addicts was to mix withcriminals. At first they had been close-mouthed when he was around, but later, when they discovered that his lips were equally tight, they spoke more freely. They knew who—and what—he was, but they accepted it, although to a few he was just another ‘flaming do-gooder’ who ought to keep his long nose out of other people’s affairs. But generally he had become accepted.
    He turned back to the bar and contemplated his glass. Nick Warren—do-it-yourself Bond! he thought. Hellier is incredible! The trouble with Hellier was that he did not know the magnitude of what he had set out to do. Millionaire though he was, the prizes offered in the drug trade would make even Hellier appear poverty-stricken, and with money like that at stake men do not hesitate to kill.
    A heavy hand smote him on the back and he choked over his drink. ‘Hello, Doc; drowning your sorrows?’
    Warren turned. ‘Hello, Andy. Have a drink.’
    ‘Most kind,’ said Andrew Tozier. ‘But allow me.’ He pulled out a wallet and peeled a note from the fat wad.
    ‘I wouldn’t think of it,’ said Warren drily. ‘You’re still unemployed.’ He caught the eye of the barman and ordered two whiskies.
    ‘Aye,’ said Tozier, putting away his wallet. ‘The world’s becoming too bloody quiet for my liking.’
    ‘You can’t be reading the newspapers,’ observed Warren.
    ‘The Russians are acting up again and Vietnam was still going full blast the last I heard.’
    ‘But those are the big boys,’ said Tozier. ‘There’s no room for a small-scale enterprise like mine. It’s the same everywhere—the big firms put the squeeze on us little chaps.’ He lifted his glass. ‘Cheers!’
    Warren regarded him with sudden interest. Major Andrew Tozier; profession—mercenary soldier. A killer for hire. Andy would not shoot anyone indiscriminately—that would be murder. But he was quite prepared to be employedby a new government to whip into line a regiment of halftrained black soldiers and lead them into action. He was a walking symptom of a schizophrenic world.
    ‘Cheers!’ said Warren absently. His mind was racing with mad thoughts.
    Tozier jerked his head towards the door. ‘Your consulting-room is filling up, Doc.’ Warren looked over and saw four young men just entering; three were his patients but the fourth he did not know. ‘I don’t know how you stand those cheap bastards,’ said Tozier.
    ‘Someone has to look after them,’ said Warren. ‘Who’s the new boy?’
    Tozier shrugged. ‘Another damned soul on the way to hell,’ he said macabrely. ‘You’ll probably meet up with him when he wants a fix.’
    Warren nodded. ‘So there’s still no action in your line.’
    ‘Not a glimmer.’
    ‘Maybe your rates are too high. I suppose it’s a case of supply and demand like everything else.’
    ‘The rates are never too high,’ said Tozier, a little bleakly. ‘What price would you put on your skin, Doc?’
    ‘I’ve just been asked that question—in an oblique way,’ said Warren, thinking of Hellier. ‘What is the going rate, anyway?’
    ‘Five hundred a month plus a hell of a big bonus on completion.’
    Tozier smiled. ‘Thinking of starting a war?’
    Warren looked him in the eye. ‘I just